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Question: What Makes a Good Web Site? |
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Answer: Below are a few items |
| Clarity | If your web pages are not clear and easy to understand, people will look somewhere else. |
| Content | Your content should be clear and straightforward. Don't try and impress everyone with all of the information on one page. Make an outline. Break down your different areas and design a site. Make it logical in the way that the information is presented. If someone wants to find one particular thing they should be able to follow your outline to get to where they can find that information. I have been to some "BIG COMPANY" sites and I have no idea where anything is. I'm sure it make perfect sense to whoever designed it but they didn't think about their audience's perspective. |
| Printable | Every web page should be printable. If you use a dark background and
white letters, it will not print. By default, backgrounds do not print.
I've been asked by students why a page didn't print - my response - "...
it did print, it's just really hard to read white letters on white paper."
You can override the defaults in the page setup options.
Background should typically be NON distracting and faint. If you are using layers - your pages may not print as expected. |
| Colors |
Colors can be very important. We have all heard of studies that say greens and blues
promote buying confidence. Green has a relaxing effect and RED the opposite. You should
make sure the color scheme is agreeable. If you are not a color expert, ask people to
give you some input on your color design. Try to keep the same color scheme for a particular site, it makes it easier to follow. If you want to really draw attention to a particular page, make it stand out a little from the others, but do not go crazy. Limit the number of different colors on a page. |
| Quick | The first page on your web site is usually index.html and should load quickly. This should introduce your site. Don't overwhelm your audience with too much information. If it takes too long to load, many people will leave before ever seeing the page. Studies have shown that if the opening page takes over 20 seconds - you have already lost 30% of your audience. |
| Blinking (NO) | Too much BLINKING and FLASHING is not good. I was looking at a page the other day and I caught myself thinking, "This is terrible." I started looking at why it was terrible and only then did I realize there were 16 things blinking and moving around on the screen. To much blinking and movement distracts from the content. |
| Graphics | Graphics should add to the page. DO NOT just put a graphic on the page to put a graphic on the page. If it does NOT add to the content, it doesn't belong there. Also, DO NOT overload a page with too many graphics. If you have a lot of pictures that you want to use to get your points across consider using several pages to present all of this information in smaller blocks. If it takes too long for a web page to load many people will leave your site before seeing your content. For a web page, most images should be no larger than about 20k. Learn how to save jpeg and gif files to reduce the file size. |
| Speed | Check out your web site from a computer with a modem connection. If a page takes longer than 20 seconds to load, see what you can take off or reduce to make it faster. We all know what it's like to sit and wait for a page. See if you need to split up the page, reduce the graphics, get rid of some unnecessary content. |
| Frames | Frames are usually confusing to beginning users. Sometimes the links get confusing and returning to the starting place is not clear. Printing frames is also a little more confusing. Bookmarking a particular page within frames often does not work. If you want to print a frame - click on the frame you wish to print and then from the FILE menu select PRINT FRAME. |
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